Books in Review Berger, Arthur Asa
Society,
07/1988, Volume:
25, Issue:
5
Book Review
Peer reviewed
Arthur Asa Berger reviews "Cracking Jokes: Studies of Sick Humor Cycles and Stereotypes," by Alan Dundes, and "Playboys and Killjoys: An Essay on the Theory and Practice of Comedy," by Harry Levin.
The following year, in response to diat challenge, Lee Haring chaired a plenary session bearing the provocative title, "Why Is There No 'Grand Theory' in Folkloristics?" Panel participants included ...Richard Bauman, Dan Ben-Amos, Gary Alan Fine, Margaret A. Mills, and Dorothy Noyes (Haring 2005).
Fine reviews "Bloody Mary in the Mirror: Essays in Pyschoanalytic Folkloristics" and "The Shabbat Elevator and Other Sabbath Subterfuges: An Unorthodox Essay on Circumventing Custom and Jewish ...Character" by Alan Dundes.
Pp. ? + 380, acknowledgments, introduction, footnotes, transcription and translation of Arabic text, appendix, bibliography, index. $187.00 clodi. The sung poetry duel of die Palestinian people is ...usually performed outdoors in the evening at traditional weddings and folk festivals in the towns of the Triangle and the Galilee (Israel) and the northern parts of the Occupied Territories. In the introduction, die author tells us she intends to provide a "description diat accounts for die duel's complex nature as a competitive form of rulegoverned play, an art form with its own aesdietic, a productive mode of composition, and, in some contexts, a creative force within a larger poetic tradition" (8).
